Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other large scale tests are often reported as rank ordered lists showing mean values for each of the 50 states. Using data from the 2003 State NAEP Assessment, this paper examines the standard errors associated with State NAEP scores and explains why the use of rank order…

This article reports on the reading comprehension crisis of older students in the middle and high school grades in our nation. Its goal is to establish a common foundation for intervention by educators and clinicians alike, by providing a brief description of the state of the field in comprehension theory. In particular, the Kintsch…

This study examined student writing over the past decades. The National Study of Writing Instruction addressed questions through analyses of existing data sets, particularly those from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which include background questions on instructional practices in U.S. middle and high schools. NAEP…

President Bush says that the No Child Left Behind Act is working, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. The data Mr. Bush cited are from just the "long-term…

This is the fifth annual edition of the Brown Center Report on American Education. It analyzes the difficulty of items on the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), examines the content training of middle school math teachers, and evaluates the Blue Ribbon Schools Program. The NAEP assesses student performance…

A diagnostic methodology for large-scale assessment was employed to compare performance on a national test in mathematics of representative samples of Jewish and Arab 8th graders in Israel in order to shed light on a previously identified large achievement gap between these 2 populations. The results revealed significant differences between the 2…

The two city districts that made the greatest strides in math on the latest national assessment relied on similar strategies: building students' conceptual math skills and investing in professional development in that subject for elementary and middle school teachers. While administrators in Boston and San Diego say that many factors were at work…

Writing achievement among young adolescents has become a significant concern. According to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) (2000), writing achievement has not changed appreciably in the last 15 years. However, NAEP data suggest that teachers have increased the amount of time students spend writing. In other words,…

Large-scale educational assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) sample examinees to whom an exam will be administered. In most situations the sampling design is not a simple random sample and must be accounted for in the estimating model. After reviewing the current operational estimation procedure for NAEP, this…

The reporting methods used in large scale assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) rely on a "latent regression model." The first component of the model consists of a "p"-scale IRT measurement model that defines the response probabilities on a set of cognitive items in "p" scales…

Over the past decade, developers of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have changed substantially the mix of item types on the NAEP assessments by decreasing the numbers of multiple-choice questions and increasing the numbers of questions requiring short- or extended-constructed responses. These changes have been motivated…

A visual arts group of researchers formed in 1999 to study statistical data from the 1997 [National Assessment of Educational Progress] NAEP Arts, responding to an open invitation at the National Art Education conference in Washington, DC to compete for funding under a secondary analysis grant. The Department of Education funded three…

States are the primary policymakers in several important areas of K-12 education. Given their dominant role in educational funding and regulation, states not surprisingly have been the primary initiators of the latest wave of educational reform starting in the mid-1980s. In this paper, the authors sought to test indirectly for the effects of…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) House Passes Budget Resolution: Prospects of a Compromise with the Senate Appear Dim; (2) Older Students' Science…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 calls for improving test scores of minority students in third through eighth grades, making middle level schools a key venue for closing the racial gap in achievement. This study, by analyzing data on the 15,000 eighth graders who took the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics,…